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Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2008 18:15:32 +0100
From: "John RABSON" <john.rabson@wanadoo.fr>
To: rsgb_lf_group@blacksheep.org
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Subject: Re: LF: QSO MODE
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A few points:

Since its early days, amateur radio has been a broad pasture.  Before the Se=
cond World War the RSGB had two main sections: Experimenters, and Transmitte=
r & Relay (T&R), which reflected some of the diversity of the hobby.  The Ir=
ish government still describes amateur radio licensees as "Experimenters".

Mal is, and should be, free to pursue the aspects of amateur radio that inte=
rest him, and I look forward to congratulating him when he achieves DXCC on=20=
136 kHz.  However, I suggest he does not have a moral entitlement to denigra=
te the activities of those who wish to conduct what my UK licence describes=20=
as "technical investigations".  I think he is also in error in suggesting th=
at the 600 m allocation is part of the amateur service.  Permits have been i=
ssued in several countries (sadly not yet in France) for people to conduct e=
xperiments in this part of the spectrum.  A similar situation exists regardi=
ng the 60 m permits issued in the UK - but in both cases, although the recip=
ients of the permits are radio amateurs, the frequencies in question are not=
 allocated to the amateur service.=20

As to the suggestion that it has all been done before, I would point out tha=
t the information that is now of interest may either never have been recorde=
d, or got lost.  When I first became interested in LF, I searched the techni=
cal library at BTRL for anything that might be of interest.  I found relativ=
ely little, and nothing recent.  What there was mostly dealt with the mature=
 technology of high power land stations with large antennas.  This is a tota=
lly different scenario from the average experimenter's situation and it is v=
ery much to the credit of the latter that much of their work is published in=
 widely-available places.

Other services can benefit from the results of our experiments.  For example=
, it became evident some years ago that a new cave radio design was required=
 as the existing widely-used one (the Molefone) was no longer manufactured a=
nd the rescue organisations could see problems looming.  What was finally se=
ttled on was based on an HF SSB transceiver by John Hey, G3TDZ.  Field tests=
 on the prototype were carried out, above and below ground, by amateurs hold=
ing permits for 73 kHz, before finalising the design for the cave radio freq=
uency of 87 kHz.

To sum up, by all means plough your own furrow, but let others plough theirs=
 and remember: we have to justify our presence on the band.

73
John Rabson=20
Radio F5VLF
58800 Cervon
France
JN17vg